{{Short description|British writer}} {{Use dmy dates|date=October 2016}} {{Use British English|date=October 2016}} {{Infobox person | honorific_prefix = | name = Eleanor Constance Bor | honorific_suffix = | image = | image_size = | alt = | caption = | native_name = | native_name_lang = | birth_name = Eleanor Rundall | birth_date = {{birth year|1898}} | birth_place = Moffat, Scotland | death_date = {{death year and age|1957|1898}} | death_place = | death_cause = | resting_place = Kew Gardens | resting_place_coordinates = | nationality = | other_names = | citizenship = | alma_mater = | education = | occupation = Writer | organisation = | years_active = | employer = | agent = | known_for = | notable_works = | style = | title = | party = | movement = | boards = | spouse = Norman Bor | partner = | children = | parents = | relatives = | awards = | website = | signature = | signature_size = | signature_alt = | footnotes = }}
'''Eleanor Constance Bor''' ''née'' '''Rundall''' (1898 – 1957) was a British writer who is remembered for her book ''The Adventures of a Botanist's Wife'', which describes her travels in remote parts of north-eastern India and elsewhere.
==Biography== She was born in Moffat, Scotland to Constance and John William Rundall, clergyman and headmaster of St Ninian's School.<ref name=RSE>[https://books.google.com/books?id=0OwrAQAAMAAJ Year Book of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 1973]</ref> Her parents’ roots were in England, and she went to a small boarding school near London with one of her sisters.<ref>1911 census</ref> In her early thirties she lived in Assam for two years<ref name=advent>{{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/adventuresofabot011400mbp|first=Eleanor |last=Bor|title=The Adventures of a Botanist's Wife|publisher= Hurst and Blackett|year=1952}}</ref> before marrying her husband, the botanist Norman Bor, in Calcutta in 1931.<ref>[https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FGJZ-Q4F Marriage records]</ref>
Their life together started in Assam. As they moved around they undertook many adventurous expeditions, often in remote mountainous areas and including a visit to Tibet. They also had one or two longer stays in established settlements. For Eleanor Bor, four years in Dehradun were mainly spent writing and drawing as she and her husband did not enjoy the social life of a British hill station.<ref name=advent/> During this time they twice went to Lahaul "journeying deep into the mountains over high passes to the snowline"<ref name=tls>Sylva Norman, Botanists on Quest, The Times Literary Supplement, 25 July 1952, p487</ref> on ponies, and Bor wrote three books, apparently never published.<ref name=advent/> She sketched in many different locations and carried crayons on her travels.<ref name=advent/>
When they went home on leave they travelled through other parts of India, Malaya, Hong Kong and the USA.<ref name=hubbard>[https://www.jstor.org/stable/4102866 Norman Loftus Bor (1893-1972), C. E. Hubbard, Kew Bulletin, Vol. 30, No. 1 (1975), pp. 1-10 ]</ref> They returned to live in the UK in 1946,<ref name=hubbard/> and a few years later Bor's book was very well received.<ref name=obit>Times obituary, 17 April 1957</ref> Reviews praised the energy and vividness of the writing as well as the quality of the author's drawings included in the book.<ref name=turrill>[https://www.jstor.org/stable/4109328 W. B. Turrill, Botanizing as It Should Be, Kew Bulletin, Vol. 7, No. 3, 1952, p294]</ref><ref name=hubbard/><ref>Review quotes in publisher's ad in The Times Literary Supplement, 8 August 1952, p519</ref><ref name=RSE/> Her originality was emphasised by critics, as was her sympathetic interest in the local people in the different places she went to.<ref name=turrill/><ref name=obit/><ref name=tls/>
Norman Bor named a grass he discovered after her: ''Poa eleanorae'' Bor<ref>[https://archive.org/stream/journalofbo5119521953bomb#page/80/mode/2up Journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, Vol 51, p80-82]</ref> She described it as an "emaciated, wizened looking affair, apparently of intense interest to a botanist".<ref name=advent/>
At the end of her life she had a "distressing" illness and her husband nursed her until her death in 1957.<ref name=RSE/> Her ashes were scattered in the azalea garden at Kew Gardens, like her husband's after her.<ref name=hubbard/>
==References== {{reflist}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Bor, Eleanor}} Category:20th-century British women writers Category:20th-century British writers Category:1898 births Category:1957 deaths Category:British women travel writers Category:People associated with Lahaul and Spiti district Category:20th-century British travel writers